"...with the authority of a close student of the work, I assure the author of it that if he imagines that he understands the character of Candida he is quite mistaken."

How I wish I could go to Chicago and see this:

Shaw vs. Chesterton: The Debate

Speaking of Shaw, I came across this paragraph from an article on Chesterton from 1905 that I found very amusing, discussing and quoting from one of Chesterton's reviews on a play by Shaw. :-)

Perhaps, however, the most characteristic passage in Mr. Chesterton's critique is that in which he takes issue with Mr. Bernard Shaw in regard to the real character of Candida. One would suppose that Mr. Shaw's view of such a matter would be entitled to some weight—that the creator of a character in a play would be able to put his finger with some degree of certainty on the trait or traits which that character was intended to embody or illustrate. But Mr. Chesterton makes no such concession to the playright. With an effrontery as audacious as it is amusing he says that ''Mr. Shaw's mistakes about the meaning of his own plays arise from the same source as his Shakespearian errors—lack of warmth and poesy." Thus "Candida" always appeared to Mr. Chesterton ''not only as the noblest work of Mr. Shaw, but as one of the noblest, if not the noblest, of modern plays; a most square and manly piece of moral truth." And, he goes on, "with the authority of a close student of the work, I assure the author of it that if he imagines that he understands the character of Candida he is quite mistaken." Quoting then from Mr. Shaw's account, as given by Mr. Huneker, of Candida's character, Mr. Chesterton controverts with no little skill the dramatist's analysis of the lady's philosophy of life, maintaining that Candida knew, as all sane people know, that "convention" is a thing quite as real as "nature," perhaps much more real.

-The Book Buyer: A Monthly Review of American and Foreign Literature, Volumes 30-33 (1905)